It’s tempting to think that other writers have it easier, or other times were easier on writers.

• Wasn’t it easier to get published when there were more independent publishing houses?
• Wasn’t it easier to make a living at writing in the golden age of magazine publishing?
• All those other writers who are selling their work must have some kind of cheat code that they’re not sharing with us, right?

This week I read the editorial in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, a relatively new publication at the time. The magazine was making its mark, in part, by offering the highest rates in the market in order to attract the best writers. And they did—publishing Brandbury, Asimov, Clarke, Del Ray, Simak, in their primes.

But here’s a snippet from the editorial that I found weirdly encouraging. Editor H. L. Gold was trying to explain to readers how the economics of the writing business work, but I think he left an important message for us writers, too:

“Counting false starts, stories that won’t work out, stories that shouldn’t have been written at all but seemed good at the time, research, productive labor, etc., it takes a stupendous amount of writing even at the highest rates to support an author and his family on magazine sales alone.”

-H. L. Gold, Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951

There’s your cheat code: there is no cheat code.

There’s just ‘a stupendous amount of writing’. 

Which we love to do, anyway, right?

Looking At The Wrong Metric

When people think of success as a writer, they tend to measure external, visible rewards: sales, income, awards, praise, etc.

But the rewards, if we’re honest, hit most deeply in those moment when a story draft pivots towards it’s real purpose, when you suddenly know what the story is really about; or when you realize you’ve revised it as far as you can, and it’s ready to be read by someone else.

The real reward is in the writing. 

What stalls a lot of people is the sense that you’re doing it wrong if you’re making ‘false starts, stories that won’t work out, stories that shouldn’t have been written at all but seemed good at the time…’

If you feel like you’re ‘not a real writer’ because it requires a stupendous amount of writing to generate the occasional piece that works, H. L. Gold would like a word…

He left those words in his editorial to justify paying the highest rates on the market; and they serve to remind us writers, that this was never easy. And that’s OK. 

Write a stupendous amount this week

If you’re an ambitious* writer, you have to write a stupendous amount to reap the rewards you’re after.  It’s not a race or a competition. You don’t have to burn out. But you do have to write. Probably more than is comfortable.

(*And ‘ambitious’ doesn’t have to mean ‘support myself financially via my writing’. That might be part of your ambition. But I suspect the true ambition is to do the best work you’re capable of.)

StoryADay May is an opportunity for you to find out what ‘a stupendous amount of writing’ feels like, over one month’s time. Are you capable of pushing through, writing when you don’t feel like it, and giving up on those ‘stories that should never have been written’?

If you want to feel the sharp satisfaction of success – whether that ‘success’ is ‘a day of good writing’ or ‘a story sold’, both are valid – remember that ‘a stupendous amount of writing’ is the baseline. It’s the thing that helps you find the stories, tell them well, and sense your own progress.

It’s OK if you don’t want to do all that work. If you have better things to do with your time, by all means do them.

But if you’re floating through life waiting for it to become easy I have some bad news: the struggle is frustrating, and annoying, and sometimes painful, but it’s also where the rewards lives.

What will you write, this week?

Here are the most recent prompts from the StoryADay challenge

Day 17 – A Critical Day, from Mary Robinette Kowal

Day 18 – Expanded Idioms, from Julie Duffy

Day 19 – Inspired by Artemis II, from Julie Duffy

Day 20 – Making a Grocery List, from Brenda Rech

Day 21 – The Nitty Gritty, from Ruby G. Dubois

Day 22 – The Hero of their Own Story, from Julie Duffy

Day 23 – Beyond Sound and Vision, from Elizabeth Twist

Not sure how to get started with prompts? The StoryADay 2026 Handbook has custom warm-ups and brainstorming exercises designed to catapult you into your day’s writing. Get it now
(NOTICE: PRICE WILL INCREASE ON JUNE 1, 2026)